NaNoWriMo says I’m more likely to finish if I have a cover, so now I have a cover. Thank you to Canva for being a thing that exists and is useful, because otherwise I’d spend the day messing around on Pixelmator instead of writing.

SO, I frogged* the Write-A-Thon. That was less than awesome, especially since the 500 words a day thing is so, so doable. In my defense: life.

But, you know what, I’m not going to feel too bad about it, because I’m still writing. (Not right now. Right now I’m up with a cantankerous toddler who decided 5am was an ideal time to start yelling for a snack. No, not that snack. A different snack.)

I’ll post an excerpt this week, too, just for funsies. Stay tuned.

*Frogged = finding an error in knitting or crochet and having to unravel the whole damned thing.

I promised to post excerpts every week, didn’t I? Well, here’s the first one. (No, you don’t get context.)

The odds of successfully breaking in to Didactics were not skewed in my favor. The building itself was designed to withstand a nuclear war. That wasn’t hyperbole: Didactics housed some of the most cutting-edge research facilities in the world, and as a privately owned company, it wasn’t constrained by federal spending limits.

There was no way I could get to the research areas. But I was pretty sure I could get to the library.

So it’s my first week of writing 500 words a day, every day, and MAN, was this way overdue.

The first several days were like pulling teeth. Every word I wrote felt slow and wrong, like I was impersonating a writer (and not doing a particularly good job of it). Nothing seemed to fit in with the rest of the story or go in directions I wanted it to go.

But. After about five days, it got a little easier. When I’d shut my computer, I’d think of what I wanted to write next. I started to see more of the story in my head.

Selective Mutism for the Modern Girl

On Suki’s thirteenth birthday, she opened her mouth to thank her father for the cat-ear headband and instead heard herself saying “The doctor will tell you it’s a tumor.”

The tumor turned out to be benign. Suki’s pronouncement turned into an anecdote, a funny story her parents told over drinks or dinner. Suki would even waggle her fingers and pretend to see the future, but each time she did there was a catch in her throat, a moment she wondered if it would happen again.

“Shizuka,” her mother said, “you are not the Oracle at Delphi, so stop charging your friends to tell their fortunes.”

Suki shrugged and tuned out her father mansplaining that the Delphi Oracles received offerings, which were different from payments, which of course was going to result in her mother quoting Shakespeare, because everything resulted in her mother quoting Shakespeare. Suki’s mother was Japanese by way of England, and people were always surprised to hear the crisp Oxford lilt coming from her mouth. People were always surprised by Suki’s voice, too, but they were surprised because she sounded like exactly what she was: an American.

If Suki was going to surprise people, she decided, she might as well do it on purpose.

“Whoa,” said James at school the next day. “What’s up with the whole anime Lolita thing?”

She’d traded her unassuming skirts and blouses for frills and crinolines, her clean-scrubbed face for big eyes and pink cheeks. She painted a star under one eye every morning. She started carrying a parasol. It was great.

The principal wasn’t nearly as amused. “Her teachers and I have noticed some significant intersocial changes,” Mrs. Kutcher said. “Shizuka used to be such a lovely girl -”

“Are you referring to her outfits?” Suki’s dad tilted his head to the side, speaking with a subtly exaggerated version of his faint Japanese accent. (Unlike her mother, Suki’s father was Japanese by way of Japan.) “Certainly you wouldn’t deny a student the ability to express her culture in whatever way she chooses, assuming it doesn’t violate any school rules.”

Suki coughed to keep from laughing. She had been very careful not to violate any school rules. Her skirts were precisely measured, her makeup angling toward doll rather than blow-up toy.

“No,” Mrs. Kutcher said, too quickly. “No, that’s not what I mean at all,” and that was the end of it.

Except that on her way out Suki heard herself murmur, “She won’t make it to the end of the week,” and even though it hadn’t been loud enough for anyone else to hear, she still couldn’t breathe when the announcement was made three days later that Mrs. Kutcher was taking an indefinite leave of absence following the death of her wife.

I’m going to a Madcap Retreat!! Just signed the contract and everything. March 14-18 I’ll be in Tennessee with Maggie Stiefvater! And Victoria Schwab! And a whole bunch of other people! CAN I JUST TELL YOU HOW EXCITED I AM? Here, I will do an interpretive dance using exclamation points:

The new site is coming along nicely. I’m having fun playing with the 2013 default theme. As it turns out, I really, really like picking out header images. It’s sort of low-impact web design, which goes nicely with my state of constant sleep deprivation (the sleep dep’s name is Rory, and she was born on August 21).

I’m also setting up a new Tumblr for book reviews, so look for a post about that soon.